Packed quite a bit heavier than on previous rides (the weight makes a huge difference for the handling) I left for Weymouth in the afternoon where I spent the night.
Unfortunately I didn’t have any spare time to explore Weymouth which is famous for it’s Jurassic Coast. At around 8am I left for my main destination, Lands End.
Four days of Easter holidays (Friday to Monday) so I will finally take a little break from work and make my first bigger motorcycle trip. If everything goes as planned I’ll leave on Saturday and be back on Monday.
The plan is to go from London to Lands End, the most western point of England. I’ll be making stops in Leatherhead, Weymouth and Bude. In Leatherhead I want to get proper motrcycle gloves at a big gear shop since the ones I have are cheap short cuff summer gloves which are not very warm and don’t protect anything beyond the ankle plus they are too small for my hands.
Ideally I would make this a camping trip but since this is a last minute plan and I don’t have a tent yet I will be using lateRooms.com where you can get a relatively cheap B&B room very short notice.
Today I made my first little motorcycle trip and went to Brighton which is just an hour away from London on the south coast of England. Brighton is famous as a tourist destination because of it’s beaches an night life.
My sophisticated GPS concoction. I’m using my phone with this fantastic navigation app from Nokia called HERE. It would be a good idea to get a dedicated GPS device but this budget solution actually works surprisingly well. Plastic bag: 50p, mount 5P, the thrill of not knowing when it will break on the road: priceless. The windshield actually keeps that relevant handle bar area almost completely dry on the road during the rain anyway. The biggest problem is making the USB connection to the 12V socket waterproof and vibration proof. Currently the USB adapter slips out of the cigarette lighter socket from time to time.
My first motorcycle. A second hand, 2011 BMW F650GS. Contrary to what the name suggests it’s not 650ccm but 800ccm. I don’t know what went through BMWs minds when they came up with this genius name since there also is a true 650ccm (also -correctly- called 650GS) in their lineup. But they have since corrected the name and later versions of this bike are now called F700GS. No joke. Anyway this will be my (hopefully) reliable donkey for my trips.